Shattuck, Lydia W. (Lydia White), 1822-1889

Lydia White Shattuck was born on June 10, 1822 in East Landoff, New Hampshire. She graduated from Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in 1851 and returned the next fall as a teacher of botany and chemistry. She became a prominent botanist, known internationally. In 1869, she took a Mount Holyoke student to Europe where they studied botany, and in 1873 she worked with Louis Agassiz and Arnold Henri Guyot at the Penikese Island (Massachusetts) school for natural history. She was dedicated to Mount Holyoke's achieving the status of a college, and retired in 1889, shortly after this goal was achieved. She died on November 2, 1889 in South Hadley, Massachusetts at the age of sixty-seven.

From the guide to the Lydia W. Shattuck Papers MS 0585., 1841-1890., (Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections)